v8 Showcase / Example Sites

[los_design]

First!!!! I don't think so young man!

Nope...I think dates need to be issued, there appears to be a stewards enquiry.

But, never the less, to be pedantic, it is not a full css site is it?

If I bought a ford modeo and put a rolls royce engine in would it then be a rolls royce?

Has anyone completed a 100% CSS site?? Cart and all

(Jonty, do not take this as a critique, I love the look and feel mate and it is a bang up job)

[RuralWeb]

First!!!!

Yep - the others I have seen either have some tables or dont work correctly. Obviously its only my opinion but as true supporter of tables I think jont deserves a Gold Star.

[los_design]

Yep - the others I have seen either have some tables or dont work correctly. Obviously its only my opinion but as true supporter of tables I think jont deserves a Gold Star.

Platinum,, it is a wonderfully put together design....

[dave_finlayson]

100% CSS excluding cart. Waste of time even starting changing the cart to css, if you ask me. Surely that's what tables are for!

[RuralWeb]

CSS site - obviously Ive started something here so can I suggest a new thread if anyone want to debate the subject

[los_design]

100% CSS excluding cart. Waste of time even starting changing the cart to css, if you ask me. Surely that's what tables are for!

Yup

but that is not the point is it? A full tabless design using css is what I am seeking to see if anyone has completed it.

In the grand schema I fully agree, css for layout, tables for data, no issue there

[los_design]

CSS site - obviously Ive started something here so can I suggest a new thread if anyone want to debate the subject

Good call and will do Malc

[jont]

I think dates need to be issued, there appears to be a stewards inquiry.

Jan 2006 ... www.winecare.co.uk

[george]

Why do folk seem to get an erection* when a 100% css site is mentioned?


Is it really that crucial and/or better? (Asking as I do not know).


The WAC's are obviously excluded from this comment.


Edit: This is terribly off topic, might be worth replying to in a new thread?

[Darren B]

good question G, i too have my own reasons for css, but why do people prefer it over tables and the like


d

[leehack]

Why do folk seem to get an erection* when a 100% css site is mentioned?

It's mainly cos it is not that easy and quite an achievement if you actually succeed and manage to do it. Cross browser and backward compatibility are issues to overcome and it just isn't as quick to do as the conventional, although CSS based will become the conventional.

Managing to do it would be similar to running a marathon, lots of training and build up and then that final run which decides whether you can do it or not. If you manage to do it, you need to tell the world, cos your penis is bigger than most and if you are really excited you get it out in public to prove to people.

It's exciting basically that's why, cos it is a little part of our industry that is racing forward. To joe public, 95% of them would never be able to see the difference though, so it's just a little something for the developer. If i manage to do something in 2 hours using CSS that i could have done in 20 minutes using a table, it's an achievement and i'm proud.

Pure CSS sites are very much a developer thing, not really that important to most site owners (at the moment). Its a bit like the IE vs FF debate, "but FF is used by 8% of people now we have to account for it", 7.5% of that 8% is the developers themselves.

[george]

Spazzy George: "But why is css better than tables (other than offering a challenge)?"

[los_design]

Spazzy George: "But why is css better than tables (other than offering a challenge)?"

is it better? depends on the site purpose, in some cases yup, in other cases nope.

is it easier to manage and update? Yes (try looking into sites with major nested table hierachy)

does it produce faster loading? Maybe

Do i prefer to use it? Depends on the site requirements.

Tables are for data, css for layout. You can control tabular layout via css.

Is it worth ripping into actinic and making a css site? Depends on the project costings et al (as mentioned by lee)

[leehack]

George, your feelings and confusion is exactly where the industry is at right now, it's a slow transition over to CSS, but it is happening.

The best way i find to explain the powers of CSS and therefore what it's actually for is this:

Imagine you have a 200 page website and on each page you have a different paragraph at the top, BUT that sentence is displayed in font size 14px and red in colour.

Your site has been live for 6 months and your corporate colours change and you need to change that sentence to be green instead of red. Now in the olden days you would need to open up 200 pages and individually change the colour. Instead of doing that nowadays, we would give the top paragraph a style and place that style in our stylesheet.

To change the colour to green using CSS, we would change the colour once in the stylesheet and the 200 pages would change instantly as they get the colour from the stylesheet, not the colour directly in each page. That in very basic terms is what CSS is all about, it's power and speed basically with all styling taken out of pages and put into one central file. You then change things in the style sheet and that does your whole site for you.

The tables vs CSS argument is mainly driven by tables being for data, not website layouts. However since the year dot they have been used for website layout, so CSS is having to fight hard to convert the fuddy duddies to this way of thinking and get a foothold, as tables are massively ahead (volume wise) at the moment.

[fergusw]

Spazzy George: "But why is css better than tables (other than offering a challenge)?"

Symantics, separating style from content and for speed optimisation purposes.

Symantics:
Tables and their tags were created to allow the displaying of tabular data. They were used this way until some clever bunny realsed that with spacer gifs they could use tbales for layout purposes as well.

Style from content:
By removing the styling from the content (i.e. into an external stylesheet) the benefit to the user is that styling can be changed globally from one location. Other benefits mean that a proper, symantically correct content can be display, distributed and utilised for other platforms (screen, print, PDA) and devices.
As content becomes more and more accessible via more and more methods (think RSS, XML etc) having semantically structured content becomes more and more valuable.

Speed:
Using CSS for styling and layout eliminates HTML TAG bloat caused by <font>,<table> and other HTML TAGS.
We have redesigned websites where we have seen a huge saving in terms of page performance simply by using a clean CSS layout design with an efficient use of CSS and CSS images.

As Lee said though, the end result can often be the same between tables and CSS (apart from the code bloat) and therefore you have to take each own developers preference and skills into account when designing.

Of course, the bottom line here, especially for Actinic site owners is - "Does it help me make more money?"

There are SEO optimisation arguments for having lean HTML code with more weight towards content instead of <font> and <table> bloat, as well as speed of page loading and reduction in bandwidth costs which all contribute to the benefits of using CSS based designs.


There are several other points I could mention, and there are many posts around the interweb that cover this argument as well.

Bottom line: Use what you are comfortable/effective with, but balance this with learning new, efficient methods and techniques. Keep the blinkers off!